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Weekday baking

Weekday baking

I am gradually aclimating to retirement. I still get twinges Sunday nights in anticipation of a non-existant Monday patient schedule. But this week I broke the thought habit of baking being exclusively a weekend activity. Maybe I over-compensated, but I don't think so.

Tuesday evening, I activated my starter and I put up a bulgar soaker and a whole wheat poolish in preparation for a Wednesday bake of my favorite 100% Whole Wheat Bread, the one in BBA.

100% Whole Wheat Bread

100% Whole Wheat Bread crumb

This is probably my favorite bread for almond butter on toast, BLT's and Tuna Salad sandwiches. We had all of these this week.

Wednesday evening, I fed the starter at 100% hydration for Thursday's bake of San Joaquin Sourdoughs and started on txfarmer's 36+ hour baguettes for a Friday bake.

San Joaquin Sourdough Breads

This bread is good with everything. We had some with almond butter, more with penne with butternut squash, sage and hazelnuts and more with a salad lunch.

We were invited to some friends' home for dinner Friday. The response to "What can we bring?" was not hard to guess. This morning, the baguettes and Pain au Levain for dinner tonight got baked.

Baguette Crust

Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat crust

Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat Crumb

I have the walnuts toasted for Cinnamon-Raisin-Walnut Bread.

To top off the week, my son, Joel, sent me a photo of the latest bagels he and 3-year old Sasha made this week, and he expressed some interest in "trying" to bake sourdough breads. I'll take him some starter when we visit in November. What fun!

Beautiful breads David. We must have been on similar wave lengths as I baked your San Joaquin SD yesterday and today's bake was a ww with bulgar but mine was txfarmers sd rendition of Laurel Robertson's loaf. I am not getting to the cinnamon raisin until next Tuesday and I have yet to try my hand at a baguette. Something about them still intimidates me....but someday....maybe.

Glad to hear the adjustment into retirement is going well and that you are enjoying yourself. Fun to hear that your son might just take up the sd challenge himself....Smart man you are to think of 'baiting' him by teaching his daughters how to make your bagels :-)

If Joel does take to SD baking, I'm confident he will make outstanding bread. I'm hoping Naomi and Sasha keep involved. I know some of my fondest memories are of me and my siblings cooking with our mother.

The WW bread is yeasted - not sourdough. I use 100% WW flour, including in the poolish. I am using a fine-ground WW flour from Central Milling. It seems to result in a lighter, more aerated crumb since the bran is very finely ground.

Way to go David. With so many people I know struggling to find things to do in retirement I love to see someone wondering how they ever had time to work. I wonder how to squeze in work already, and I'm not even close to retirement!

I hope you are increasing your exercise time along with your baking time....otherwise after a few months of retirement you could be in trouble with all this amazing baking and cooking!

On a serious note, I've been making your Rustic Sourdough Baguettes the last couple of weeks and I have to say I was very happy with the flavor....my shaping needs some work even though this is a rustic style bake.

My question for you is how do you compare the flavor in the Rustic Baguettes versus the TxFarmer ones?

I have tried the TxFarmer ones twice and I still need some practice with this formula as my results were not even close to hers or yours.

Well, from my own bakes so far, the Gosselin baguettes had somewhat better flavor. However, my retardation times for txfarmer's version was a bit shorter than she recommended. A longer second retardation would probably enhance the flavor. I don't think you would be disappointed with either formula.

I love your spectacular baking. I empathise with your Sunday nite twinges. Mine took the form of repeating dreams of having to show up at work, and not doing much once there. Something like Ground Hog Day the movie, well, just as annoying. Always feels great as the realization that it is a dream finally sinks in.

...your pre-retirement baking. I remember you doing four bakes a weekend. Beautiful breads (just like before)!

As for me, I'm having a 60+ hour work week, including about 10 hours this weekend. Still managing to bake bagels and a Hamelman multi-grain thingie. When I retire (in about 10 years), I'm gonna bake eleventeen times a week!

David, I have no doubt that Naomi will have no problem teaching Joel how to bake sourdough.

You know Joel. If he decides to "try" something, he will master it. Maybe we'll make some epis. That would be fun for Naomi and Sasha.

When they were here in August, I had a couple loaves of SJSD cooling for dinner when they arrived. There was one left by time dinner was served. Erin's the one who did the most damage. But it's okay. She's the triathelete and marathon runner in the family.

So, I spent a good part of today writing an introduction to sourdough baking for them, including the formulas for SJSD and my San Francisco-style Sourdough and an appendix on baker's math. Hmmmm ... I ought to include the formula for my pugliese.

What a great looking breads! Not a surprise there. The questions I have are these two breads: The 100% whole wheat and Pain au Levain with whole wheat. I do bake the Pain au levain from Jeffrey Hamelman bread book. Is that the same? I tried to incorporate more whole grains in my baking for my family but the whole wheat breads are always a problem. Yours look delicious. Could you share the recipe please?. I do use your formula for feeding my starter but when you refresh your starter, how many feeds do you give to your starter before using it in the recipe?

If I am starting with my refrigerated stock starter, I feed it once to activate it, then again to make the particular levain a formula calls for. Note that my activation feeding may be as a firm or a liquid starter, depending on the bread(s) I will be baking.

Thank you very much for sending me the link for the light and fluffy 100% whole wheat and also for your explanation above. I will definitely try both of the breads. My family already loves the regular Pain au Levain and now it is time to put in some whole grains.

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